In praise of open drains

Open drains can easily blend into the landscape plan.

Every time I take a shower I wonder when the bathroom drain pipe is going to clog up. It runs under the kitchen and the laundry room we added later so digging up the pipe is not an option. 

The drain pipe for the kitchen sink clogged up years ago. You know the symptoms. The water in the sink takes longer and longer to drain. You try a bit of Draino, then you bring in the plunger, then the snake. Then the pick and shovel.

Fortunately we hadn’t progessed as far with the landscaping then so digging up the pipe was a chore but it was unimpeded by cement patio blocks, a steam room and a sala. A post-mortem revealed a plug of grease and god knows what about six meters down the pipe.

In its place I built an open drain. An open drain is ditch by any other name. My ditch is lined with cement and has decorative paving stone covers so it’s a sophisticated high-tech ditch. It carries grey water from the laundry room and the kitchen out to the field in back of the house where things grow like mad during the dry season. I built a spur line along the outside of the bathroom in anticipation of the day the bathroom drain pipe clogs up.

And ‘no’, it doesn’t smell. Get the slope right and you won’t have any stagnant water. The big advantage of an open drain (with covers) is that they are easy to clean. Every six or 12 months I flip the decorative paving stone covers and take a high pressure water hose to it, much to the consternation of the toads who seem to like it very much as it is. And when someone drops a bottle cap or a diamond ring down the drain, just flip a cover and there it is.

Learn more about open drains

This is the urban storm water management manual for Penang. Lots of technical information that can be adapted for household use.